Riders pass supporters and residents on Main Street as they approach the finish during the seventh and final day of Ride the Rockies. Ride the Rockies concluded with a 47-mile ride between Canon City and Westcliffe on Saturday, June 20, 2015. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)

WESTCLIFFE — Warren Johnson and Diane Tribbett, donning matching tuxedo cycling jerseys, crossed the finish line together on Saturday here in this quiet old railroad town and embraced in a kiss.

The couple was celebrating their ninth wedding anniversary. Every year since their wedding in Denver’s Cheeseman Park, they’ve been on a bicycle tour in Colorado — six times with Ride the Rockies. Johnson served in the town’s clinic briefly while in medical school at the University of Colorado Boulder, and his wife sent her children to summer camp here. It was their first time in town together.

“He is the much stronger biker,” Tribbett said. “He usually stays with me, or almost always, really. And sometimes I feel guilty, because he could do it way faster. And once in a while, I sag, but not for long.”

“We do a lot of training, and I have plenty of time to ride by myself,” Johnson said. “And it’s more fun to ride with someone.

Westcliffe, and its neighboring town, Silver Cliff, resting at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, came alive as first-time hosts on Ride the Rockies, welcoming nearly 2,000 cyclists finishing the 30th edition of the tour.

A cyclist walks his bike up the steep hill in Royal Gorge Bridge and Park during Day 6 of Ride the Rockies, a 66-mile route from Salida to Canon City on Friday, June 19, 2015. (Callaghan O’Hare, The Denver Post)

CAÑON CITY — At dawn on Friday, we stirred from our beds in Buena Vista and listlessly readied to cycle our sixth day of Ride the Rockies, a 66-mile downhill trek from Salida to here in Canon City.

We pushed off early — around 6 a.m., wearing arm warmers and gloves — because we knew by 11 a.m., temperatures would be around in the mid-80s, and there’s nothing worse than climbing or pedaling on open roads and baking under the sun. I’m here with Denver Post photographer AAron Ontiveroz, who took up cycling just 12 weeks ago and is already crushing me up and down hills (not that this is a race, of course).

Friday was a welcome change, with the first 45 of 65 miles of the mostly downhill along U.S. 50. On Thursday, almost half the ride was a climb toward the 12,100-foot Cottonwood Pass. We flew past the first aid station, averaging 23 mph, and then stopped at the second for a quick breakfast burrito before hitting the bottom of our lengthy descent and turning onto a gritty, bumpy road — ever so slightly uphill — just after mile 45.

A route map for Day 6 of Ride the Rockies 2015 from Salida to Cañon City. (The Denver Post)

By then, even at 9 a.m., the heat was coming. And then we approached “The Wall,” a section of road leading to Royal Gorge Bridge and Park that, thus far, has been the steepest climb of the route. So steep, in fact, that spray-painted instructions on the road urged riders to downshift — i.e., make it easier to pedal — as quickly as possible. Ride officials also stationed volunteers at the base — one of whom had the unenviable job of telling riders that the two-mile climb would include 12 percent grades in parts and averaged 5.4 percent. I can’t imagine how unhappy people were to see and hear from him.

Cue the misery.

It was the first point in this ride’s more than 400 miles that I considered stopping and walking for part of it. Many probably thought this, and more than a few decided it was the only the option they had. A rider in front of me actually turned the narrow road — scattered with potholes, loose gravel and divots — into mini switchbacks, zagging back and forth over the road, to try to conquer the grade.

Cyclists ride over the Royal Gorge Bridge during the 30th annual Ride the Rockies event on Day 6 on Friday, June 19, 2015. (Callaghan O’Hare, The Denver Post)

From there, we climbed out of the park and then sped down into Cañon City and — optionally — a short climb to Skyline Drive. I could have kept cruising down the road and into town, but figured after more than 25,000 feet of climbing, what was a few hundred more feet?

After a little more than three hours, I finished, legs sore, but ready for our final day — 47 miles that includes a 29-mile climb over Hardscrabble Pass, and then down into Westcliffe for the 30th anniversary finale.

The route for Day 7 of the 2015 Ride the Rockies tour, from Canon City to Westcliffe. (The Denver Post)

Samaritan House riders hug after being the final riders to complete the course during the seventh and final day of Ride the Rockies, which concluded with a 47-mile ride between Canon City and Westcliffe on Saturday, June 20, 2015. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)

It’s one thing to be facing 12 percent grades and 90-degree temperatures, as the Ride The Rockies riders encountered on the sixth of the seven-day tour heading from Salida to Cañon City. But Team Samaritan House is using their time on the tour to help those facing a more daunting challenge: no food, no home or no opportunity to change the situation.

Samaritan House, a homeless shelter run by Catholic Charities, is an organization benefiting from the fundraising muscles of 19 Ride The Rockies participants. Tom Schwein, a former CEO for Deep Rock Water, started the charitable endeavor five years ago that was first just a way to lose weight for his daughter’s wedding.

“I was with my co-captain Tom Dea at his Christmas party, and I weighed quite a bit,” Schwein said, who’s down more than 50 pounds since that party. “So we’re talking about how to drink less beer, exercise more, and he said, ‘We should do Ride The Rockies.'”

He and Dea bought six entries that first year and raised $12,000 for Samaritan House, a charity that Schwein is passionate about.

“It’s not just a one-night stand where you get a meal and you get a bed. It takes you from homelessness to a career path. They’ll put you back on your feet so you’re stable in your life,” he said.

Riders with the Davis Phinney Foundation ride during the 97-mile route from Grand Junction to Hotchkiss on Monday, June 15, 2015. (Callaghan O’Hare, The Denver Post)

CRESTED BUTTE — Carl Ames still remembers what his doctor told him in 2008 when he diagnosed him with Parkinson’s Disease.

“I remember I was told it wasn’t a death sentence — it was more of a life sentence,” said Ames, an operations manger for a trucking company who lives in Phoenix and was diagnosed in 2008. “It was awesome to know that as many chronic illnesses as you can deal with, this is one that you can live with. You don’t have it hanging over your head.”

His attitude is indicative of those found renewed hope in cycling for the Davis Phinney Foundation, represented here at Ride the Rockies with a 30-member team that includes seven patients with Parkinson’s riding the route.

Ames’ symptoms are typical of patients Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disease characterized by the lack of dopamine production in the brain: His movement is stiff. When he walks, his arms don’t swing. He struggles to get out of chairs and off the ground. Even just walking a few feet from the tent where we’re talking to get a bite to eat can be a challenge. He suffers often with pain and easily gets distracted. Typing and texting are difficult. So what about riding a bike 464 miles over seven days with more than 31,000 feet of elevation gain?

“Cycling is probably one of the best exercises I can do to help me move,” Ames said. “When I’m riding, I feel like I don’t have Parkinson’s.

Cindy Burke recalls her hitchhiking effort to get from Westcliffe to Grand Junction for the start of the 2015 Ride the Rockies. (The Denver Post)

A few days before the start of this year’s Ride the Rockies tour, Cindy Burke had a problem. Her plan to drop off her car in Westcliffe, so it would be there at the finish, and then ride in a friend’s RV to Grand Junction, fell through after her friend decided not to do the ride.

Burke, 56, tried to get a ticket on one of the charter busses from Alpine Cycle Connection headed from Westcliffe to Grand Junction, but they were full — and had plenty on the waiting list. She emailed and called every person she had ever met in 13 years of doing Ride the Rockies and came up empty.

Burke, who was determined not to miss the ride, decided a few days before the ride she could only do one thing: hitchhike.

But plans change, and Burke had no other options. Decades had gone by since Burke last hitchhiked, in college. That Friday, with rain steadily falling in southern Colorado, she threw on bike jersey “because I didn’t want to look like a bum,” held out her thumb, and waited.

Cyclists ride through Tuesday’s rain during the 30th annual Ride the Rockies. Ride the Rockies kicked off stage three of seven with a 78-mile bike ride from Hotchkiss to Gunnison on Tuesday, June 16, 2015. (Callaghan O’Hare, The Denver Post)

If the second day of this year’s Ride the Rockies tour reinforced the value of wearing sunscreen, Tuesday was a lesson in carrying more than enough clothes to keep warm.

We set out just after 6:30 a.m., hoping to beat predicted afternoon thunderstorms on a 79-mile route from Hotchkiss to Gunnison through Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. But by the start, the clouds had begun spitting us with rain, and we started weighing what we could carry in the back pouches of our jerseys and what we could do without.

In: Rain jacket (which we put on immediately), arm warmers, full-fingered gloves, two energy bars and two full water bottles.

Out: Boot warmers/covers and leg warmers.

Regrets: Not having the boot covers/warmers, especially on some cold, rainy descents around Mile 40.

Plenty of people had all of it — and were wearing it in various stages throughout the day.

With so many aid stations, food, water and snacks are plentiful, so it’s important to carry something because distances between aid stations can be long. At the aid stations, if you want something more, you can eat everything from fajitas to pancakes, sausage, burgers and breakfast burritos — assuming you can keep it down. Both of the last two days would have been difficult to complete without external support, if for no other reason than the aid stations allow you to fill your bikes’ bottles.

Jenny Filter loves her flip-flops. You can tell. There she is, biking past you, in her flip-flops. There she is, biking up the Grand Mesa.

This isn’t Filter’s first rodeo, and even when it was, she was there, in her flip-flops. Filter’s bicycled the past eleven Ride The Rockies, yes, in her flip-flops. A friend convinced her to ride it in 2005, and she did, on her 12-year-old mountain bike, in her flip-flops.Read more…

MESA — Lance Armstrong leaned over his bike at a rest stop here on Day 2 of Ride the Rockies, waiting for his friend Tim League, founder of the Alamo Drafthouse, to refill his water bottles and refuel with snacks.

The aid station at Powderhorn Mountain drew dozens of cyclists who were midway through the most brutal climb of the seven-day tour — a 20-mile ascent up Grand Mesa. A few stopped to take selfies with Armstrong, who obliged. Most passed by without noticing him.

“Most of these people are probably from Colorado; they have the advantage of being acclimated. Tim, though, he just came up, so he’s a little … oxygen’s kind of a problem for him,” Armstrong tells me, grinning. “And we don’t have these kind of climbs in Austin — this sustained stuff is just a grind.”

For the cycling crowd who knows what to look for, Armstrong is hard to miss. He passed me about 39 miles into the route, wearing his trademark “Mellow Johnny’s” jersey and bibs, from the Austin, Texas, bike shop he opened in 2008 with a few other business partners. I asked him how his ride was going as he passes, his cadence consistent and steady despite the 6 percent grade.

“I’m liking it,” he called back.

These days, Armstrong says he doesn’t ride much anymore. By that, he means he isn’t putting in the miles and the hours on the bike he did when he competed as a professional cyclist and won seven Tour de France titles before being stripped of them by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency because of his use of blood boosters and other performance enhancers.

He still rides around Aspen, usually on short routes, while occasionally hammering on a long ride. He spends the summer there before heading back to Austin, where his three kids go to school.

“I don’t ride very much,” Armstrong said. “Tim, my buddy from Austin, is doing this, and so we do some stuff together in Austin on the business side. So I just told him I’d come up here.”

In 2012, I asked a former colleague whether he was interested in running the Chicago Marathon. Two weeks later, he asked if I was interested in Ride the Rockies. I got a road bike, got on the tour, and have yet to regret it. This will be my third RTR.

Daniel Petty is the digital director of sports for The Denver Post. He competed in track and cross country all four years inc college, but that was six years ago. Now, he's doing Ride the Rockies for the first time.